All DJ Entries

Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary and notes written while awake]

Last night, while going to sleep and attempting to MILD, I stopped to pray. I had stopped to pray the previous night, too, and had had no dreams that I could remember, so I almost didn't want to do it again, but I told myself, Post hoc, ergo propter hoc much? You know that doesn't make sense. Just go ahead and do it. So I did. [I'm only writing this part down because it relates to the first dream I had last night.]

[Dream #1] On the corner of the street my house is on [a corner that doesn't exist in real life – the real corner is just a 90-degree turn in the road, but in the dream, it's a four-way intersection], in the front yard of the corner house, there is a big, tall tree with bright yellow leaves like the leaves on a maidenhair tree. There are also some gourds with faces hand-carved on them hanging from the tree. The house belongs to an old woman, who did the carving. I am reading a newspaper article about this house, in a newspaper called The Syntax. According to the article, a few days ago, a strong wind picked up and blew all the leaves off the tree. Immediately thereafter, people in the neighborhood started having various strokes of both good and bad fortune, and they all claimed that it was because of the wind blowing the leaves off the tree. This sparked a neighborhood-wide controversy: were the good things really caused by the tree, or the bad things, or none of them? Someone who was interviewed for the newspaper article argued for the “none of them” position by quoting the Bible verse about how no one can tell where the wind comes from or where it is going. [John 3:8, for the record.]

[Dream #2] I'm walking through an indoor hallway to get to some kind of high school sporting event that is being held in a high school gymnasium. One of the teams is called the Blue Meanies; they have two mascot outfits, a male and female Norse warrior. The other team has someone in a mascot outfit, too. [I don't remember now what it looked like, or what their team name was.] Each team has also brought just a handful of cheerleaders to the game.

[Dream #3] I'm playing PackRat. [Again.] There are two different limited-release collections pretty much right at the same time, and they've re-released a whole bunch of retired cards for the recipes in the retired collections. The images on one of the limited-release sets are of pipes or cables, and they extend across multiple different cards. They're making it even easier than they did with the jigsaw-puzzle set, I think. [The jigsaw-puzzle set exists in reality; this limited-release set does not.] I find that my pack has been erased and refilled with 5 cards from the other limited-release set, the one with normal art [in Doug J.'s signature style], one of which is the top card.

[Dream #4 – seemed to segue directly from the above, but how, I couldn't say] I'm outside somewhere, apparently in the yard or garden of some manor house or something, and it's nighttime. I see a fireworks show starting up a short distance away; the horizon is low and flat, so I can see it with no obstructions at all. My mom is there, and I tell her that if she turns around, she can see the fireworks show.

Woke up at 2:32 A.M. Took some notes on my dreams so far on a notepad, then went back to sleep, attempting to MILD again. It worked!

[Dream #5] I'm in the house I grew up in again. [Although this is a known dream sign for me, I don't remember specifically thinking, “hey, if I'm here, then I must be dreaming.” Nonetheless,] I'm lucid enough to decide to walk around from room to room of my own volition. When I get to the bathroom, I try to walk through the back wall of the white tile shower, which would take me out into the patio. [Yes, the real house is laid out that way.] It doesn't work; I only get part way into it, not through it. I don't feel anything. I continue walking through the house, and one of my parents sees me. [That's all I remember, unfortunately.]

[Dream #6] My family and I are on vacation in Key Largo. [Apart from having tropical beaches, it's absolutely nothing at all like the real Key Largo, which I've been to once.] It consists of a couple of islands connected by a bridge. On the first one, there is a high, tower-like hill. We climb the stairs to the top and look out at the ocean and the other island, which is where the town and the boat launch area are. I exclaim, “Guess what I forgot! Sunblock!” Then we go down the hill and over into town.

The town, or at least the downtown, consists of one big continuous building with corridors lined with shops and restaurants running through it. The entrances to the corridors are numbered and are rounded, making them look more like tunnels. We go down corridor #8 and pass a lot of shops. It's obvious how small and rivalry-filled, yet close-knit, the community here is by what's written on the signs people have in front of their shops: one of them says that their food is better than the food at another shop (even specifically naming the other one!), and another contains a proposal of marriage. Eventually, the tunnel ends in a rounded food court, like in a mall. My parents and I go over to a coffee shop/bakery toward the far side of the chamber and a little to the right. There are breads and pastries displayed all over the back wall and in long glass cases.

[Very abruptly, the scene changes and] My mom and I are driving in her car back toward the main highway that runs through the Florida Keys. (The two islands mentioned above that make up Key Largo stick out from it at a right angle.) I see the high-rise buildings of Key West [the what now?!] in the distance. The sun is either rising or setting, and the way its light is hitting them is making them glow with amazingly brilliant neon colors. [Some of which would be impossible in real life. It's surreal, but really beautiful.] I tell my mom to look at the light on the high-rises, and she does. In order to get a better view of it from further back, she turns the car so the front windshield is facing the high-rises, then starts backing it up, across the sandy beach and into the ocean. Somewhere around here, I shift to viewing the scene from a third-person perspective, up above the car. The car keeps going across the water for a pretty good distance before it sinks into the ocean and we die. Then I think to myself, “Only not really, because this is a dream.” Then the scene rewinds [on its own, not because of anything I did, thought, or willed]. The car drives forward, back over the surface of the water, with me still watching from my third-person perspective.

On our way back toward the town (I'm back to first-person perspective now), I look back and can see where the main highway is by the telephone poles and elevated bridges on the horizon. When we reach the town, I can see that there's a small railroad that goes all the way around the outside of the building, and every shop has a back door that opens onto the railroad track. This is how they load and unload things. Of course, I think; there's no room for cars or trucks on the island. [Then what are we doing driving our car there?] We re-enter the coffee shop/bakery from before, through the back door, and now we order food: cinnamon rolls out of one of those canisters you get from the refrigerated section at the grocery store. The shop attendant opens the canister behind the counter, and the vertical stack of cinnamon rolls expands, the frosting running down the sides. I say aloud, “Do want!” We proceed along the outside of the glass cases to where the coffee machines are. The signs on the coffee machines show that they contain a milder and a bolder version of Dunkin' Donuts coffee. I start getting myself some coffee, and then the dream ends.

-------------

Some meta-commentary on the lucid dreaming journey:

One of the things I'm really liking about this experiment with dream journaling and lucid dreaming is that it's finally broken me of the bad habit of staying up past 11:00 every night that I developed when I started college. I was still doing it up until a week or two ago. I always used to want to stay in bed until well after sunrise, but the sunlight always woke me up, so I got a sleep mask and got into the habit of reaching over and putting it on as soon as the sunlight started to wake me up, then continuing to sleep, or trying to. I've been in this habit for at least a year, and I'm finding that it's so deeply ingrained that I'm still doing it, even though I'm now going to bed earlier and getting up at or before sunrise. I would be annoyed by this if I hadn't realized that it's useful – I have a natural, biological WBTB alarm set.

Last night, I read this thread and decided to adopt the mantra “I lucid dream” for MILD purposes. I decided to put that sentence in the same mental categories with such sentences as “I play the clarinet,” “I speak Spanish,” and “I write novels:” the categories of “ongoing, recurring action” and “learned skill.”

My previous lucid experience back on the night of October 1 left me euphoric for the entirety of the next day, but this one just left me disappointed. While I was recalling my dreams after waking up, I thought: What did I just say about lucid dreaming being a learned skill? That was only my third time. What was it like the third time I played the clarinet? I know the answer to that one: I only played one, two, or three different notes, because that was all I knew how to play. It took lots of practice and learning before I could play all the notes. I hope, and intend, to master lucid dreaming skills via the same process.

I slept GREAT last night. Zeo game me a score of 94, compare to my average of 68. I slept 9 hours total with 3h 48m in REM sleep in 6 cycles. That's a lot of dreaming!

I took the B-Complex vitamin one hour before bed and took a relaxing hot bath to meditate and adjust my body temperature for sleep. Tonight's dreams weren't as vivid as yesterday. Maybe the apple juice was the difference? But they were really really long. The three that I recalled seemed at least 30 minutes long each. I wrote a while page of notes for each and could still recall more detail that I didn't bother to write down. In fact, they were so long and not very interesting that I'm going to cut them short here.

Gordon Ramsey's Love Troubles
0503: B. Gordon Ramsey guest stars on a TV sitcom, maybe The Big Bang Theory. Gordon is a roommate with the dorky guys and there another group in the next door apartment as well. It's too crowded and someone says "Someone has to go back to Poland!"

Then scene changes to outside a nightclub with Gordon and the roommates. His part is to approach a shy girl and ask her for a date as a prank. She is supposed to be charmed because he's so famous. But she isn't interested and the prank backfires. Gordon is surprised and humbled. There's a taxicab in the scene.

Then the scene starts over but now it's "real" life and not the TV show. Gordon does the same thing of approaching a shy girl and gets rejected. He's humbled and goes into the club. A really hot redheaded woman meets him and comforts him. But then she finds out it was a prank and she's really really upset and leaves. Gordon is now completely devastated.

Then the dream really jumps around. There's a parking lot and a staircase. It leads to a college dormitory with a rec room. Gordon is in the rec room with a TV, arcade games, and a giant touch-screen computer thing. Some college students are in there watching TV. Now I am the main character in first-person instead of Gordon in third-person. Lance is looking for me but I am avoiding him. The students in the rec room cover for me.

Exchange Student
0651: B. I'm an exchange student living with a foster family. It seems like I'm still in the US though. The first part of the dream jumped around a lot. I'm supposed to film a TV commercial with this family. Then I'm making some kind of cake and pudding desert. But when I try to flip the pudding out on top of the cake, it spills on the floor and I feel bad because it's someone else's kitchen. Then the foster family has a bunch of kids and they are leaving for school but I stay at home. One kid, a girl of about 7, turns around and comes back into the house, refusing to go to school. There are a bunch of mothers from the neighborhood standing in the kitchen. Meanwhile, I am eating something in the living room and spill some red sauce on the couch. I feel bad again and clean it up with a giant beach towel.

Scene changes and now I'm in Japan with a different family. It's the first day of school and the student body is in the gym. We receive our grades from the previous year. I am afraid I failed but I get a B. Then I'm walking with the foster family toward a restaurant to celebrate.

Scene changes and I'm in a restaurant but now I seem to be in Mexico with yet another foster family. I sit alone in a booth away from the family. I order a hamburger and whiskey. I finish them and order another. A few teenage girls sit at my booth but ignore me while I eat. Then I ask who they are and what is going on. One has her face painted white like a geisha. She says it's a holiday and tells me the name in Spanish. I ask what it means and she says in English "Ten Years and Two Days."

False awakening. I roll over to write in my dream journal. I note the time is 1137 and my previous entry was at 10 something. But the light coming through the window is too dim for that time. I think, wait, is it really that late? Then I wake up for real.

short WBTB

Work Retreat
0825: B. I'm at work and a few people just got laid off. One was the other Michael, so I'm the only Michael left. I joke about this with coworkers that there won't be any more confusion.

Then everyone at work goes to a small restaurant out in the middle of a nowhere on a small rural road. It looks like a lodge. I ride along with Lance and we park across the street. Everyone is given sweatshirt and pants randomly in blue, gray, or black. We watch a movie about color and light and supposedly we have to study for a test on it next week. Then we watch some other movies made by people at work. Ex-employee Garrett is there and I avoid him. He made a film where he's looping a belt through the skin around his waist. It reminds me of a surrealist film.

Then it's time to go so I try to find my sweatshirt in the big pile of identical ones that people have left. Other people are also searching through the pile. There are other people in the restaurant. They seem like a biker gang and I feel nervous. I just grab a matching pair of small blue sweater and pants and leave. I'm going to ride again with Lance but I fall behind as we're running outside. He crosses the road before me. It's dusk and the highway has many cars going very fast with their headlights on. I try to cross a few times but turn back because I almost get run over. Then I walk to a narrower part of the road where there is just 2 lanes and cross.

I meet with Lance and there is also the other Michael who is going to ride with us. People from work have divided into their cliques in the parking lot and are talking and gossiping.

Restful, but light sleep this night with many short interrupted dreams. The lucids are barely worth counting. I'm giving myself credit for at least recognizing some dreamsigns that made me lucid.

Food and Robots
0523 C. Hazy and jumpy. Two girls are competing for my attention. We are in a two story house. I'm resting on the couch on the first floor watching a boy singer who might be a robot. One girl is on the first floor and the other on the second. They are both cooking things for me. One cooks a steak but it looks like a big raw beef roast. Around it she puts a bunch of small Philly-style cheesesteak sandwiches. The other girl made something too but the first girl blocked her from showing me. I go to the bathroom and I think the second girl meets me in there to tries to tell me something. Something about the cartoon charactor Lisa Simpson. Maybe she is Lisa. Then the boy robot singer starts singing again but he's terrible. The first girls is upset about this: "Did you reset the game back to beginning?!"

Meanwhile, I recall cut scenes in between my plot to a different character. It's a guy pretending to be a robot. He's dressed a bit like the Tinman from Wizard of Oz but really skinny. He's trying to blend in with other robots that all look that same. The robots greet him in a robotic voice (think the infantry droids from Star Wars) saying "Left-hand side of you." To which he is supposed to salute his right arm across to his left side. Then "Right-hand side of you" and salute with other arm. The pretend robot catches on to this greeting and fools the other robots. At one point he is drinking from a water fountain. I sense he is my friend.

untitled
0654 D. Short dream. Not sure what to make of my notes: I'm baking a special bread that will make me lucid. Carry inside my body? The Simpsons.

WBTB+MILD 10 minutes

untitled
0748: D. I'm Homer Simpson and I'm practicing MILD. I go into a dream world with simple geometric-shaped objects like Tron. I'm being chased by men in suits with pistols like the agents from The Matrix. I can stop their bullets just like Neo.

Trouble sleeping, turned it into a WBTB+meditation and reading DV for about an hour total

False Awakening Chain
1018 C. This was about 20 minutes of false awakenings. In my own room. I can see through my sleep mask. I see my desk and alarm clock in the wrong place across the room. I'm lucid but can barely move my arms and legs. I manage to sit up in bed. At this point IWL, the garbage truck shows up and makes a loud banging noise about every five minutes. Each time, this either wakes me up or triggers an FA. Some times I could move my arms to nose-plug and I was awake. Other times I couldn't move my arms. I'm unsure how many times it happened but I recall a couple more lucid periods.

False awakening. I can see but the view is dark and blurry. I sense a small dog jump on my bed to my left. He gets close to my face and I can feel the heat of his breath. I can't move to look at him. I'm just trying to be patient for the scene to solidify. The dog starts growling. Interrupted by noise.

False awakening. I'm laying on my back and can't move my body. I can tilt my head down and look at my body. My view looks like an X-ray image highlighted with electric blue. A blue line extends along my body like my spine but continues all the way down to between my feet.

Eventually, I reach a real wakening and give up on this futile chain so I can note it in my journal.

False Awakening, Dreamsign
1044: C. Another false awakening. I can see through my sleep mask. I notice my bedroom door is open when it shouldn't be. I hear my roommate in the next room, whisking eggs I think. I can't move.

untitled
1000: F. I recalled this dream after/inside the dream that followed it all I remember is a fragment. A blond man?

Doomsday Program, Customer Complaint
1114: D. Really jumping with very short and fast scene cuts. I'm at work. I woman comes in and tells me I have to get out fast. It's like near the beginning of The Matrix when Neo needs to sneak out of his office. The woman leads me to a car and I'm driving. We are chased by some bad guys. I tell her to reach in the back seat and grab a special cell phone. I tell her to dial a special sequence of numbers. She does and it activates a doomsday program. We are on a bridge over water and parts of it collapse but the section we are on is intact. Buildings around in the distance all blow up and collapse. The bad guy car can't follow us but we're stuck on this section of bridge.

Cut to what feels like a ransom exchange with the bad guys. I hand a guy a brief case. He looks like Andy Garcia's character in Ocean's Eleven. He hands it to another guy who then runs along a the bridge cable but there's no bridge.

Cut to a big warehouse building with a dirt floor. I have my shirt off and I'm fighting the bad guys gladiator style. One of them is still the Andy Garcia character.

Cut back to me at work. I'm dozing on a couch in the kitchen (not real IWL). I keep thinking of the previous dream about the blond man. I'm trying to keep it in my mind so I can recall it later. I look up at the bulletin board and see a red poster with a very angry customer support email complaint on it. Something about a guy who lost his credits after they went over 4000. I ask, "Hey, has anyone looked into this?" A co-worker (IWL he's just an artist) gets angry at me. He says it would be so easy to look up the guy's account and he describes the few keystrokes that it would take. But he says he knows it's probably just a fraudulent claim and it's a waste of time. He's angry at me because he thinks I care too much and it's a waste of time. I'm taken aback my this.

Stove Fire
0424: C. This was early in the night and my notes aren't clear. Talking to a family of Italians in a kitchen. We're talking about food. One guy is sitting on the edge of the stove even while all four gas burners are lit, each cooking a small pizza. I try to warn him that he should move to another seat. Sister walks away very upset. He brags that a 9-inch pizza is 5 pounds of food. His clothes catch fire. Everyone is yelling at him to move but he seems paralyzed. Father puts out the fire with a fire extinguisher. Sister comes back with an "I told you so" attitude.

Backyard Ninjas
1100: A! Last sleep cycle of the night after 30 minute WBTB with MILD auto-suggestion. This might have been an unintentional WILD because of how the dream started. My plan was to practice teleporting, but I went off the script.

I start in bed, trying to fall asleep. I don't really know if I was really awake or dreaming INRA. Either way, I open my eyes and can see something through my sleep mask. I can still feel it around my head but it's like a hole is cut in it and I can see a blurry scene of what looks like a grand piano from far away. Now I know I must be dreaming but I still feel like I'm in my physical body. I'm not in the scene, I'm just seeing it without a dream body. So I just stay calm and don't try to move or control anything. I just watch what's happening in the scene and gently suggest that the "camera" move and zoom in. Gradually, the scene starts to look like a room with sunlight coming in a sliding glass door. This reminds me of the Daisetta house.

Then, WHAM!, I'm in the scene with my dream body. I'm not sure if this was a sudden change or a gap in my memory. It's the most vivid lucid I've had in a while. I phase through the glass door and out into the backyard which is a fairly faithful recreation of my true memory. There's a swimming pool, a concrete patio, a patio table with a giant umbrella and steep incline of dirt. The yard is surrounded by a tall fence and trees. I just look around a appreciate the vividness for about a minute. It's so calm and peaceful that the dream starts to destabilize and I wake up.

I remain still in bed to DEILD back. I imagine myself spinning in the same scene. And I'm back in the same spot. Phew. I figure I'd better do something but I forgot my plan so I think of any random task from my list. First task, I run and skip across the surface of the pool water with ease. I'm thinking of what to do next but my memory and vividness aren't as good as before. I figure I should stabilize a bit. I see a long garden rake laying on the patio table. I reach to grab the handle but I can't move my arms! I don't panic. I spin and recover my arms. I rub my hand and then grab the rake. All this improves the stability and I decided I'll just do something silly and fun.

I hold the rake like a bowstaff and assume a fighting posture. I suggest to myself, "Uh-oh... ninjas!" I look around and see four ninjas perched on the tress and fence around the yard. They are all in black with hoods and black sunglasses. The pounce off their perches to attack me with short swords. I fend them off with my rake and fight back for a few minutes. Eventually, all four are beaten and laying on the ground. I walk up to one, and snap his neck. Blood flows from his nostrils.

I walk up to another and realize it's a woman. I instinctively tear off her clothes. But I realize that I'm losing control and this will end the dream. I stop myself, stand up, and turn away. I'm now in the side yard and I can see a glimpse of the rest of the neighborhood toward the street. I think of all the houses with their doors and I'm reminded of the lucid dream from the night before. I begin to remember that my plan for today was to practice teleporting through doors. But before I can move, the dream fades away.

Experimenting with some dream titles to break up the wall of text a bit.

0230: F. Two sentences of illegible notes.

Birthday Girl, Bro Code
0337: C. Even in a dream, I obey the bro code. I'm at a girl's birthday party. I came with Lance. It's indoors at a house. There are about a dozen people there. It's dark outside and mostly dark inside. Lance and I pull the birthday girl aside to give her the gifts, so the three of us are alone in a dark room. Lance forgot to bring a gift, but luckily I brought two. I say they are from both of us.

The birthday girl has short black hair. She's tall and pretty. She's wearing a dress. She opens the presents. One is wrapped in purple, the other in yellow. Yellow is her favorite color? I don't remember what the gifts are but she really likes them and is very happy. She starts making out with both of us. (Not the arrangement I had planned for my first threesome, but whatever) As things get heated, it's clear the girl is more interested in me. She pulls off my pants and ignores Lance. Lance gets up and paces around the room upset. He keeps saying "That's not cool." I stop her and get up. She wants me to come back. I leave with Lance.

Hell Is An Amusement Park Line
0510: C. I need to raise half a million dollars, fast. Maybe I'm in debt to a loan shark.

Scene change. I'm in purgatory. I guess I'm dead. I'm waiting in line to be judged to go to heaven or hell. The focus changes to someone else, like I'm watching the movie of some else's life. The main character is a man who died while trying to solve a crime. He's destined to go to heaven, but he chooses the go to hell instead. He hopes he can find more information in hell to solve the crime. I think that's heroic. His partner tries to stop him and says he's crazy. Our hero says he's from San Francisco. Somehow that makes sense to the partner and lets him go.

Scene change. Now it's hell. People come sliding down a big ramp into a large red cavern crowded with people. It's lit by flames and it's fairly bright. Our hero comes sliding down. The focus switches back to me in first-person. I'm already in hell when the hero arrives. In hell, everyone is standing in tight groups in little pens formed by metal railings. It's just like waiting in line for an amusement park ride. I'm standing near some elementary school classmates and they are talking on and on about boring stuff. I think, this IS torture. I think that's funny.

I yell to someone who just arrives down the slide. "Hey, I hope you can come up with the money, by the way. Just because I'm dead doesn't mean I don't have bills to pay. But it's not like I can do anything about it from down here."

Birthday Gifts, Annoying Ice Cream Girl
0716: C. I'm indoors in an unfamiliar place but I get the impression that it's my own bedroom in a house. Apparently, it's my birthday. I'm unwrapping presents. Most of the presents are children's toys like dolls and figurines. My sister gives me a new Blackberry. I walk across the room to plug it in to charge. Another gift is D&D-like role playing game. Hugh wants to play so I unfold the map across the floor. I remark how big the map is. It's about 6 feet by 3 feet.

Scene change. I'm in a outdoor mall in a food court. I'm wearing a blue shirt with faded white lettering that says "BIRTHDAY TODDLER." Everyone is gone except Hugh, but he starts walking away leaving me alone. There are other random people in the food court though. A girl from the crowd walks up to me. I'm not attracted to her. She says she want to satisfy some urges and then walks away somewhere, as if to go fetch something that she will bring back to me. I feel awkward. Another girl walks up to me. This one is attractive and I want to talk to her. She wishes me happy birthday. I ask how she knew it was my birthday. She says it's written on my shirt.

The first girl comes back and hijacks the conversation. The second girl walks away. I'm annoyed about that but I try to be polite. The girl has a variety of ice cream and she starts feeding it to me. She want me to guess the flavors and pick my favorite. I play along to be polite. The first one is dark cherry. The second is strawberry. There are two more that I haven't tasted yet. The next one is green so I'm thinking it will either be mint or pistachio. Dream fades.

0740: False awakening. I don't RC. I roll over to write in my dream journal about my last dream. I write something but I don't note the time. Then I wake up for real. I RC. I roll over to write in my dream journal. I think, wait! Didn't I just do this? Damn it! I write: "False awakening. I dream of writing in my journal."

Unstable DEILD
0811: D. Again, I'm in the food court of an indoor mall but this one is different. I'm with two friends but I don't recall who. We sit at a bench near the actor who played George's father in Seinfeld. But he doesn't say anything. A young blond girl walk up to us nervously. She says "Did you guys know there's a dance coming up?" We say nothing and she walks away.

Another group of girls comes and sits near us in the same set of benches. One attractive blond looks at me and says "Hi I don't know if you remember me." I don't but I guess just to keep the conversation going: "Did we meet last night?" She says no. "I'm on of the 'Real Players.'" I have no idea what that means. Then she starts talking about a family and farm animals. Scene fades.

I wake up and DEILD into a lucid. My view is totally distorted. It's like I'm looking at a blurry TV, off center and from an angle. On the TV it looks like Street Fighter and I struggle to recognize one of the characters is Guile. I turn my head to try to center the view. Instead, I enter a rocky tunnel. I'm floating through, like I'm being carried underwater. It's like in medical films when they stick a camera down a person's esophagus. I look at my hands and rub them. The view still sucks. Dream ends. I think, damn, another difficult scene. I guess I need to be more prepared to face anything that comes at me. Or maybe I just need to be patient and let the dream solidify before trying any control.

09/22/10

One gigantic funeral/conspiracy dream I don't remember. Moving on.



I think I'd been dreaming about dolls. There was, of course, something entirely creepy about them. Also, dog trainers, road trips, and friends of Zoe.

I'm walking down a short flight of carpeted steps, into the entrance hallway of a house somewhere. My foot hits the bottom step, and Oh, I think. I'm dreaming.

Reality check. I need to get back into the habit. Finger count: six.

I'mlucidI'mlucidI'mlucid, I repeat to myself, concentrating. What did I want to do, again?

Oh yeah. "Do nothing."

I sit down on the light grey carpet and place my hands palms up over my knees. I take a deep breath, and close my eyes briefly.

Everything turns a swirly grey. Alarmed, thinking I'm going to lose the dream, I open my eyes and begin touching all the surfaces in the room. Carpet, wooden bench, painted walls.

I feel that the dream is secured, and walk out through a screen door. The screen door pulls around me, warping, and I push through it.

I find myself at the entrance to a meeting place. A gym, or something. Apparently, it's for members of Nomad's shared dreaming class.

I introduce myself as "Sam", and chat with some of the other students. One girl's avatar or userpic was very pink. We ended up making out on a couch.

I'm losing lucidity, and I don't notice. One of the students is an old friend of mine, who died a couple years ago. Elaine sits beside me and whispers something in my ear.

I'm hungry. We're sitting in a cafeteria, and I have to get back to class soon. I want some vegetarian food, but the Thai place is closed, and the sushi place doesn't have anything without fish in it. Someone brings a Saskatoon Berry Pie from the restaurant next door.

Scare Factor: 2/10
Rating: 3/10

Type: Regular dream.
Lucidity: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Vividness: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Notes:
Yesterday in a DVA class, we were talking about rainforests and parrots. Obviously that's where the content of this dream came from.

I was in a rainforest. It was well-lit, as well as the vegetation being much more spaced out than a regular rainforest. It was very spacious and there was tons of space to fly and swing from trees, vines, and whatever else one could think of. This rainforest had massive trees; most of them were tilted to the side at around a thirty degree angle from the ground, and the bark was very textured, allowing for easy grip. There was a small clearing, the same lighting as the rest of the forest, and I was crouched on a tree that slanted away from the clearing.

I was a parrot. Also in the clearing was a brown, black and white monkey, a smaller-than-normal tiger, and some sort of blue bird; they were sitting or standing on the ground or trees. We were talking because we needed to leave the forest, and immediately. There was some sort of coming danger to us.

"I know a good place to go," the monkey said. It was a realistic-looking monkey, not one of the cartoony ones, and it had very human-like eyes. It looked at me as if awaiting a response.

"I'll lead," I said, even though the monkey hadn't told me where we'd be going.

The atmosphere got slightly darker, as if a screen of black had been overlaid on the forest, and I was now by myself. I was also in a large clearing; while the forest was around me, there was a flat area with light brown dirt, and this was where I was sitting. I was holding a device to fly with; it wasn't finished though. It consisted of a straight hollow yellow tube, about the thickness of a pencil, and the length of an arm. Two of the same tube curved out from the end of the first tube, touching the other end. Coming out from the middle of each of the two tubes was a thick wing-shaped piece of tin foil. It was an airplane.

The dream skipped once again and I was now on the edge of a cliff. The cliff wasn't a steep or sharp drop, but more like the side of a cliff that had been eroded and was now full of rock pieces and chunks sticking out. On top of the cliff, and along larger pieces of rock, was grass and a small village. I was on the utmost top part of the cliff, looking down. There were trees hiding the opposite side of it, but behind them I could see a beautiful lavender, blue, orange, purple, and yellow sunset that looked like a watercolor piece. "What a beautiful sunset!" I said out loud.

This is where the plane I made changed; it was now twice as big as before. I held onto the two curved tubes and it began to float upwards a bit. I dangled from it and then started to kick with my legs, causing it to move in the direction I wanted. I veered down the cliff and onto one of the patches of grass. There was a nice white fence with a few cows closed in it, and there were houses and small busk stops. There was a larger tent with a person selling spicy food. "Want some?" she asked me as I walked up to where she was.

There was a barbeque in front of her; it was one of those half-circle ones with the flat grill on top. There were tiny, smooth pieces of fish on top, and they even had pale grill marks on them. I picked one up, right off the grill, and dropped it on the ground. "Thanks" I said, and walked away.

09/20/10



We're taking our lunch break. A bottle of Starbucks Frappuccino appears in my hand. It's delicious; the taste is replicated perfectly.

"Are you ready to go?" My dad asks, from the couch. He's asking if I'm ready to go back to work.

"I haven't even eaten yet!" I say, exasperated.

Scare Factor: 1/10
Rating: 1/10

Good sleep habits lead to good recall. Zeo shows just three really long sleep cycles and I recalled a dream from all three. This is the first time I've recalled a dream from the first cycle. My pen is running out of ink.

I was really confident I'd have a lucid and I had a few tasks lined up to do. Oh well. Tomorrow will be even better.

0445: Sleep

0635: C. I sense that I'm at work but the building is more like an apartment. It's dark outside, maybe raining. I am sorting laundry in a bedroom. I came to the office to work on the weekend? I was hoping to be alone. I have a bottle of Jack Daniels. Hugh is there. Lucas also works at this place. I am actually an undercover cop and Lucas is a criminal. We are both using aliases. I tell this to Hugh. He's getting ready to leave to drive home. I ask to wait so we can leave together but he leaves without me. Then Dave pops in (with Laura maybe?) He is going to a dinner party or something. I also tell him about being an undercover cop. I show him two photos are me and two of Lucas and tell him the real names. Lucas looks like Wolverine in his photos. Another couple enters the office. I vaguely recognize them but don't remember their names. Dave blurts out "Hey, Michael is really Lieutenant...!" but I forget the name I used. The couple doesn't really hear this from across the office. I shush Dave and he stays quite.

0655: Back to sleep after WBTB

0916: A. This dream was quite vivid and I felt I had an above-average degree of reasoning capability (although what I do in the dream is pretty stupid). Zeo reports that this dream happened during a epic 75 minute long REM cycle. But what I recall seemed about 15-20 minutes. I'm in a house in a nice suburban neighbor, but it's unfamiliar. I'm in a bedroom on the second floor. It's night outside. I'm talking to a girl who is leaving for a house party in the neighborhood. She suggests it's going to be really wild. She leaves. I look out the window and see two plastic baggies on the sidewalk near the lawn. I go outside and pick one up. Inside there is pot wrapped and labeled in plastic wrap and in vials. There's also rolling paper and a condom. I sense that these are for the party. Someone is spreading them around the neighborhood for people to bring to the party. I take them back up to my room and look at the them, reading the labels of the strange ingredients. I hide them under my bed, go outside to get the other bag, and bring that one up too.

I open a laptop and find a live streaming video of the party. I join a live lecture. A guy is going to explain how to use the things in the bag. I feel nervous so I take the stuff down to my car which is parked at the curb across the street. I hide the bags under the passenger seat and lay down in the back seat. I see police cars rolling through the neighborhood. I pretend to be asleep but I know I'm going to get busted. A cop opens the front passenger door and takes the stuff from under the seat. Then they open the back door and I fall out. They charge me with... burglary? It seems the pot was bought with stolen money so having the pot makes me an accomplice to the burglary. I ask, "Isn't that 'accessory to buglary'?" The cops laugh and say they've never heard of that. I argue, "What if you're the guy driving the car from a bank robbery?" Then they say, oh, that's a good point. (IWL, I don't think any of that law or logic makes sense). I am walking with the cops down the street and they are friendly. It's starting to get light as morning comes. They are talking about gambling.

1135: D. I think my recall was good but I was disturbed by my alarm and the dream faded very fast. I tried for several minutes to remember because it felt so close on the tip of my memory. All that was left was a fragment. Something about cooking food and wrapping it in bags.

0/2
Note: I snoozed late the previous day and then had a Red Bull late in the afternoon that made for a poor night's sleep.

0515: Sleep

0730: B. I live with a family in a mansion. And evil genius get the building to collapse and the one next door burns down. But I catch him and everyone is happy. Then we rebuild the mansion but use it for the company office. We lay a bunch of people off so that there is room. Again, people keep getting fired and we reorganized the seating in the building. I get to keep my office but everyone else is upset. A bunch of stupid people get assigned into my department with no relevant experience. I am upset and just stop caring. For lunch I prepare a bowl of apple sauce and also a bowl of cottage cheese. I realize I don't want both so I try to get someone else to take one, but no one wants it. So I decide to try to eat both.

1033: C. At work I make a risky decision to change a distribution plan. Something about things produced in San Diego by women. I have to explain myself to the boss. But in the end they understand that the delivery must wait an extra day.

0/3 Lucid/Recall

Notes: Fell asleep drunk on bloody marys.

Analysis: Very irregular waking times for me, doubtless due to the alcohol. I usually have 90 minute cycles with uncanny accuracy. Poor recall and motivation this night. The dreams seemed rather plain and unimaginative. I observe two obvious influences from the waking day in the dreams.

2300: Sleep

0400: D. Something about new Facebook accounts and importing old friends.

0603: D. Mostly unreadable. Something about smoke alarm going off which woke me up [I cooked pork chops on the stove for dinner]. On waking up, I was disciplined enough to suspect FA and did an RC; I was indeed awake.

0850: B. I'm with a bunch of people, some from work some from high school. It's a bit like Disneyland. I have a girlfriend. She is white. I don't know who she is. We all play this game where we write personal stuff about us on these pre-made cards. I spend a lot of time in the bathroom. The bathroom is weird. People try to use the sinks as urinals [I drank two glasses of water prior to this sleep cycle]. At the end, the personal secrets are revealed. My girlfriend doesn't know me very well. At some point we're in a creek under a bridge.

Type: DILD.
Lucidity: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Vividness: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Notes:
I dug up this entry from a slightly older dream journal.

This was one of my first induced lucid dreams, and the first in which I ate food.

I was at the end of a mall-like area, the flooring was tile and the entire room was rectangle-shaped, with a large square archway leading to the rest of the mall. I looked through the archway and saw stores, signs, and a pale blue bench in the middle of the aisle.

At that moment, I realized I was dreaming and started freaking out, but I stayed calm enough to keep myself in the dream. I decided to start small and work on dream control, so I figured I'd start by eating something of my choice. I looked around for a few moments and then looked to the side of the room. There was now a small cafe there with a large glass display in the front, and the door was open. I walked inside and smelled coffee, chocolate, and something like band-aids. There were round glass tables with the curly legs, and polished wooden bar stools for sitting. Right before looking at one of the tables, I said, "there'll be a large piece of chocolate cake". When I looked at it, there was a white plate with the cake on it, as well as a fork beside it.

I took some of the cake and ate it; it tasted like chocolate liqueur and Godiva chocolate, and the icing was very smooth.

I had two abstract dreams yesterday.

Stuck in China:

The streets are very dirty, and very crowded with people walking through. I had no money with me at all. I walk around for awhile and find a restaurant on a street corner. For some reason I go in and order the most expensive thing on the menu. After eating it, I had no way of paying for it. I spent the rest of the dream running around attempting to find a way to pay for the food. More towards the end of the dream, I saw an open door with a sign that I couldn't read, so for some reason, I went inside. There was this rather large ginger lady that said she was the owner of the shop. She also said it was a tattoo parlor and that her name was Britney Spears!

My Old School:

I was at my old school for some reason, and it was the last day of school there. My logic in the dream was that I was there to say Hi to all of my old friends that I have not seen in a long time. So, after school lets out kids are running out of the school rejoicing that it was the last day. I saw a lot of my friends that I haven't seen in years, I called there name and they didn't even look at me, like they didn't recognize me, or couldn't hear me. Then some kid tried to steal my Zune out of my pocket, and when I looked over he vanished. It was a strange dream, I kept trying to talk to people but no one seemed to be able to hear me, or see me. I was ignored by everyone, WTF!?

My recall is getting better, I remembered lots of details about these two dreams, very long, very detailed.

There are several kids (pre-teens and young teens) on an expedition. They've split into several groups, and I'm in one. We are with an adult in a position of authority and wisdom (a Rupert Giles kind of character).
We are going to pick up someone who's in a cave. But there are also humanoid monsters, sort of lizard people. We spy on them from the cave's entrance, and we watch Giles negotiate with their male leader.
The females of the species seem to be way less civilized, since we can see on eat some food like an animal in a side tunnel.

I am outside my house, planting flowers with a little shovel. I am humming an unknown tune to myself. I stand up and wipe the dirt off my knees. Then I hear a shot echo through the air, and a sharp pain in my chest. I look down, and I see a large bullet wound in my heart. I cover my face with my hands and start to cry. I collapse to the ground, curl up in a ball, and die. Then, my ghost rises from my body. I stand there and look at my body, wondering what happens next. Then, a ray of light appears from above my head. A female angel dressed in white floats down, and holds her hand out to me. “Come,” she says. I reach my hand out to go with her, when somebody starts to pound on the window of our house from the inside.
I look to the window, and see my mom inside, yelling and pointing her finger at me. “Aubery Ruth, don’t you DARE go to heaven! You don’t deserve to go there, you can go straight to hell!” I start to cry, when the angel grabs my hand and drags me to heaven. “Don’t mind her,” she says, “she is going to hell.”

I appear in a dark room, and I'm sitting at a long table. I can hear voices muttering and laughing, but I can't see anything, since it's all dark except a ring of light around me. I look down at a plate in front of me. On it is like some sort of stir fry, mostly yellow with red cubes of meat and broccoli. I pick up my fork and take a bite. Eh, its ok. I thought Heaven food would taste better. A big booming voice says from somewhere, "So, Aubrey, I bet you haven't ever eaten BOOONELESS meat before, eh?" I look around, and say, "Umm actually, we have boneless meat on Earth. Like chicken wings and stuff."